Welcome to the blog of the California Teachers Empowerment Network. CTEN is a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers and the public at large with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues.

In light of the Vergara case, there is proposed
legislation in Sacramento that deals with the controversial issues involved. Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla (D-Concord) has introduced
legislation that would change both seniority and tenure as we know it,

Under
Bonilla’s bill, teachers who are doing poorly would be placed into a program
that offers them extra professional support. If they receive another low
performance review after a year in the program, they could be fired via an
expedited process regardless of their experience level.

New
teachers would potentially take longer to obtain permanent employment status,
often referred to as tenure. The probationary period for new teachers now lasts
18 months. Bonilla’s bill would allow school officials to keep teachers on
probation for a third or fourth year after placing them in the professional
assistance program.

Seniority
would no longer be the single overriding factor in handing out pink slips.
While tenured teachers with positive reviews would still be the last to go,
Bonilla’s bill would allow districts to lay off permanent teachers with two or
more poor reviews before they lay off newer teachers who have not received poor
evaluations.

A quick review of the Friedrichs
case: The lawsuit, which would make teacher and all public employee
participation across the country voluntary, was on track to win in the Supreme
Court until Antonin Scalia’s death in February. At that time, all involved
agreed that the vote would be 4-4 and the decision would revert to a lower court
ruling; thus there would be no change to the existing agency fee rules. In
fact, that’s just what happened on March 29th when SCOTUS revealed
that it was evenly divided. Then, on April 8th, the plaintiffs’
lawyers filed a petition to rehear the case after a new justice is chosen to
replace Scalia. The petition states, "The questions presented in this case
are too important to leave unsettled with an affirmance by an equally divided
court, and they are guaranteed to recur in the absence of a definitive ruling
from this court.” The petition also argues that it is "quite common"
for the Supreme Court to grant rehearing "where the court is equally
divided, particularly when there is a vacancy." To read an Education Week piece on the petition, go
here - http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/school_law/2016/04/non-union_teachers_seek_friedr.htmlTo read
the petition itself, go here - http://pdfserver.amlaw.com/nlj/friedrichs_v_cta_pet_rehearing.pdf

Ed Source’s John
Fensterwald has written an interesting piece on the Friedrichs case in which he asserts that “Besieged teachers unions
reach out to their members.” As he states, the unions got a reprieve and an
“opportunity to learn from a near-death experience.” One paragraph in
particular really caught my eye:

And it has seen a
growth in membership, notwithstanding the spotlight that the Friedrichs lawsuit
cast on the teachers’ option to pay only agency fees instead of full union
dues. (UTLA Secretary) Barnhart said the percentage of teachers who are paying
only agency fees dropped in two years from about 10 percent to 4 percent. The
largest increase in membership coincided with the union vote last year on a
contract with a 10 percent pay raise. UTLA converted 900 teachers on election
day. Many of the 2,700 teachers who had
been paying agency fees “didn’t realize they weren’t members,” Barnhart
said. The union gave them a provisional ballot to vote and signed them up, he
said. (Emphasis added.)

I find it quite surprising that so many agency fee payers
do not realize they must resign from the union to achieve that status. If any
of you know others who are unaware of the agency fee facts of life, please send
them to the CTEN web page where membership options are discussed - http://www.ctenhome.org/teachers-union-membership-options.html

For those of you
who are still union members, most notably of the CFT variety, you might be
interested in a piece written by CFT president Josh Pechthalt in the union’s
Feb.-March newsletter. In a piece called “The State of Our Union: We are
working to “Activate Labor for Justice,” Pechthalt states the following,

We must deny
Republicans the White House. The next president may appoint more than one
Supreme Court justice. I don’t want my daughter or any child living in a world
where a majority of right-wing Supreme Court justices are making decisions
about women’s rights, healthcare, the environment, affirmative action, union
rights, and the power of the wealthy and corporations to buy elections. We have
to work hard to elect a Democrat.

Is there a war on
school choice in California? Watchdog.org’s
Amelia Hamilton certainly thinks so. “Currently the 15th friendliest
state for school choice, California’s educational establishment is
fighting back. While the battle against charter schools continues to rage, the
Los Angeles United School District (LAUSD) has recently denied parents the
right to a parent trigger option, throwing the law into jeopardy.” She ends her
convincing piece with “Stuck in a bureaucratic, unionized past, school
districts are looking to strong-arm these options away from families rather
than grow with the educational opportunities that are becoming available.” To
read the whole article, go to http://watchdog.org/260240/war-school-choice-california/

In a recent US News & World
Report piece, “America’s Bankrupt Schools,” Lauren Camera sounds alarm
bells, explaining that “Pension plans could be the culprit behind broke
big-city school districts,” and goes on to detail the bleak fiscal situation
that now burdens Philadelphia, Baltimore and Chicago. Among other things, she
claims, “the funding crises have had serious ramifications on the
teaching profession, making it difficult for urban school districts, which
already struggle to attract and retain teachers for the most underserved students,
to fill open positions.” To read this provocative piece, go to http://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2016-03-18/why-big-city-school-systems-are-going-broke

According to a new report, from the Washington,
D.C.-based think tank Education Reform Now, an affiliate of the advocacy group Democrats
for Education Reform,

One in
four college freshmen who enroll in college directly after high
school enroll in remedial classes. Remedial students who begin at
four-year colleges are about 75 percent more likely to drop out of college
— an issue both K-12 and higher education policy experts have been grappling
with for years. Much of that research has focused on lower-income minority
students who attend community colleges. But a report released Wednesday shows
this student population is far from the full picture, pointing to an “expansive
failure” of American K-12 schools in preparing all students for college.

Just
how bad are the Common Core tests in New York? According to a teacher there,

Over the course of
three consecutive days last week, students in Grades 3-8 took Pearson’s
New York State Common Core English Language Arts tests. As was the case in 2013, 2014 and 2015, I felt that the 2016 English Language Arts tests were
developmentally inappropriate, confusing and tricky. Despite the New York State
Education Department (NYSED)’s “adjustments” to the 2016 assessments, there was
no improvement to the quality of the tests.

Every week for the last 5 years
I have been contacted by what seems to be a neverending parade of targeted
senior teachers at the top of the salary scale that make up 93% of teachers
being charged and subsequently removed from their careers at LAUSD. They all
tell with minor variations the same story: They are being hit with fabricated
morals charges or inflammatory allegations of being racist for doing something
as mundane as teaching about race in the context of the civil rights movement
in a Social Studies class.

They all describe the open
collusion of UTLA from chapter chairs on upwards with LAUSD against them in a
process that presumes them guilty without UTLA doing anything to come to their
aid. The only teachers UTLA has ever defended are those within the UTLA
"power" structure. Just ask Alex Caputo Pearl who was targeted when
he was at Crenshaw High School and very atypically had the union successfully
come to his defense.

In any event, if you enjoy
these letters and find them informative, please pass them along to your
colleagues. We know that there are many independent-minded teachers in
California who are looking for alternative sources of information. Many thanks,
as always, for your interest and support.